He began his medical studies at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, served in the Communist Party, and finished his studies in Cuba. He specialized in dermatology in the former Soviet Union. He served in the Colombian Communist Youth in 1975. In the early 1980s, he joined the FARC. In 1993, after the eighth guerrilla conference, he led the project to create a health care system for the FARC and a pension system for combatants who could not return to the war due to their injuries. He was the primary physician for Manuel Marulanda and “Mono Jojoy.” In 2008, he was named a full member of the FARC Secretariat and, in 2010, he assumed control of the FARC’s Eastern Bloc as political commissioner. He participated as a FARC delegate in the 2010–2012 Exploratory phase.
